February 11

After reading the assigned chapters in Exodus and the Ratzinger excerpt, I come to the conclusion that God is simple in his complexity. God is a being to whom it is impossible to assign a name to; nobody else is worthy of naming him. This is why God demonstrates such repulsion when Jacob and Moses ask for his title. What we do know of God, as Ratzinger explains, is that he is “not bound to one spot but is present and powerful wherever man is.” This seems to be a fairly accurate description of an all-powerful, all-knowing being. Since God is a personal God, he is able to develop a special relationship with each of us– we just have to demonstrate faith and let him in. As Ratzinger puts it, “God is found whenever man lets himself be found by him.” He is everywhere at once which is impossible for us to comprehend. Yet, because God cannot be confined into just one category, he is one being with three persons as the trinity suggests. Things get complicated in the New Testament with the introduction of Jesus, God’s beloved son. Ratzinger says that “Christology, or belief in Jesus, is raised to the level of an exposition of the name of God and what it signifies.” Thus, we believe that Jesus bears the name of God and acted as God would. Since names are necessary for social incorporation, it was necessary for Jesus to have one so that we could believe in him. I think that God is a being who loves all of us fully and desperately craves a relationship with all of his created. He wants us to live in order to glorify his name, as he explained to Moses in Exodus 9: “this is why I have let you live: to show you my power and to make my name resound through all the earth.” Although I will never grasp a full understanding of who God is, I am confident that such a being exists.